Let’s start with apologies: when guessing that SMIC would be the 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] source foundry for ST-Microelectronics 28nm FD-SOI, I was wrong. To be honest, if I had made the assumption that Samsung was this double source, I would have generated dozen of comments, calling me “crazy blogger”…for the best. Announcing Samsung… Read More
Author: Eric Esteve
Selecting the Right Standard Cell & Memory for 28HPM DSP core: real case with CEVA XC4210
Listening to a webinar at your desk, in front of a PC screen will never replace a live presentation, but the lesson learned to time spent ratio can be incredibly higher than when traveling to a conference to listen several presentation. If you are interested by the approach taken by a complex DSP design team to overcome the various … Read More
4G BaseBand Support with TeakLite4? Add Also CEVA-Bluetooth!
The CEVA-TeakLite-4 is the DSP IP issued from the TeakLite family, started about 15 years ago with the 16-bit, single MAC TeakLite. Now the TeakLite-4 is a 32-bit, quad MAC IP core, supporting 2G/3G/4G Wireless BaseBand or PowerLine Communication. But even the latest BaseBand computational requirement doesn’t saturate this… Read More
Do You Really Know RapidIO?
About 10 years ago, I was in charge of the product definition of our next IP to be released, the PCI Express gen-1 Controller. I was also involved in the decision process to select the new functions to develop, in respect with the market size, all of this being the definition of “marketing”. The reason why our company decided not to develop… Read More
Leveraging Design Team Energy!
Once upon a time, in 1987 to be specific, a French design team was trying to develop a 100% Made in France supercomputer. In fact, not really 100%, as the CPU chips were supposed to be made by Weitek, but we never saw any of these chips, probably too challenging to be designed right first time! Anyway, I was in charge of the design of the … Read More
FD-SOI : SMIC or…Who else?
In fact, as of today, nobody can refer to an official statement made by any STM executive about name of the foundry able to process FD-SOI wafers in 28nm. We just know that the agreement is about to (or has been) signed… But we may speculate, and try to use our rational thinking. For example, the Semiwiki readers had the opportunity to… Read More
Eric Esteve to Present during CDN Live 2014 in Munich
I will have the privilege to give an “IP Outlook” presentation during next Cadence event in Europe, CDN-Live to be held in Munich the 19[SUP]th[/SUP] to 21[SUP]st[/SUP] of May. I had a look at the agenda, and the conference will be pretty busy, especially on Tuesday, as there will be more than fifty presentations, starting at 10:30… Read More
Welcome, LPDDR4!
Thanks to memory controller expert Marc Greenberg, Marketing Director for DDRn Controller IP with Synopsys, for this post “Qualcomm announces first application processor with LPDDR4 capability”. According with Marc, this Application Processor, the Snapdragon 810, is “the first product that I’m aware of that will use LPDDR4… Read More
Does Processor IP still get the Lion’s share in 2013?
I think that the answer is pretty obvious, but the interesting point is to figure out which processor type, and which part of revenues, up-front license or royalties? One of my customers, let’s call him Mr. X, ask me to clarify this point. Mr. X has bought the excellent report from Gartner “Market Share: Semiconductor Design Intellectual… Read More
Death to ‘content marketing’
If you ask me: Are you blogging for Semiwiki? The real answer could be:
No, I am just telling stories, but these are true stories! This idea is perfectly illustrated by this post that I found on:
http://www.pivotalpod.com/death-to-content-marketing/
And in particular this extract, as it is something that I could have written … Read More
Facing the Quantum Nature of EUV Lithography